I've been covering the video game space for 20 years for outlets like The Washington Post, Reuters, CNET, AOL, Wired Magazine, Yahoo!, Entertainment Weekly, NBC, Variety, Maxim, EGM, and ESPN. I serve as EIC of GamerHub.tv and co-founder of GamerHub Content Network, a video game and technology video syndication network that works with Tribune and DBG to syndicate game videos and editorial around the world. I also cover games for outlets like The Hollywood Reporter, IGN, Geek Monthly, CNN, DigitalTrends and PrimaGames.

The 75 people working at Meteor Entertainment have big plans for their first game, the free-to-play online Mech shooter, HAWKEN. In development at Adhesive Games, over 500,000 people have been playing the Unreal Engine 3-powered shooter through closed betas. But HAWKEN will be opening the floodgates to the rest of the world come December 12, 2012 with the open beta.

The sky’s the limit for the potential of this new online game, which is bringing hardcore gaming action to the free-to-play space. Mark Long, CEO of Meteor Entertainment, believes HAWKEN can attract 10 million gamers in 2013 and generate over $100 million in revenue for the company, which is funded by the likes of Rustic Canyon Partners, Benchmark Capital and FirstMark Capital.

It’s worth noting that the latter two investors bankrolled Riot Games’ free-to-play online sensation League of Legends, which has propelled eSports to the next level. There are many interesting things about HAWKEN, which I believe also has eSports potential. But one thing that stands out with the approach Long is taking with HAWKEN is that he’s bypassing traditional marketing in favor of a transmedia approach. Long talks about this unique strategy in the exclusive interview below.

How are you marketing HAWKEN to gamers?

We’re going to try to avoid spending advertising money and instead invest that money in a Web series. We’re going to use the creative to market the product. That’s something that’s state-of-the-art on Web side, but it’s new for gaming. We’re a Web-based business, so we’re going to use content marketing to drive this. Social media is the accelerant, and we’re layering the transmedia strategy on top of that. Why should we spend our money on a bunch of ads no one is going to click on? Instead, we’re going to put that into the game world. We have a Web series, a feature film, comics and novels. These are all things that can be digitally delivered and cross-linked for online discovery. A few years from now consumers will be able to find any of these digital avenues into this universe and it will serve as a digital funnel to the game.

What role will microtransactions play in this free-to-play game?

We have the 12/12/12 open beta and we’re currently selling the Vanguard Initiative, which is a pre-sale bundle to start the game with different levels of Mech and VIP features, including support for clans. Once the game launches, it’s about customization. But we’re not going to follow the worst practices in the free-to-play space and create a lot of frustration, forcing players to buy their way out of said frustration. Zynga’s problem is it’s a one trick pony and they’re cannibalizing their own market by irritating their own players. All their games are the same. Core gamers would never sit for any of that.

What are the challenges of entering the free-to-play space?

Other than League of Legends, Planetside 2 and Mech Warrior Online, the free-to-play PC games space is filled with crappy games. It’s filled with Asian imports with low production values. Gamers tend to correlate free-to-play with low production values. In addition to bringing a quality core gaming experience to this market, we also need to use microtransactions correctly. The hurdle for us is to avoid the pay-to-win model that Wargaming uses with World of Tanks, where you start with a low-tiered tank and get your ass handed to you and you have to buy your way out of it. While that game has monetized fantastically — they monetize earlier than anyone else with many players buying microtransactions within the first week – it’s a strategy that works in Russia, but has been less successful in other territories. With HAWKEN, we’re selling customization and a little bit of convenience, as well as support for clans and servers.

Speaking of servers, how has that part of the business been evolving?

Our server technology has panned out much better than we had hoped. We have dedicated servers on virtual machines. We’re using the cloud as a virtual OS on different cores of a server, which provides greater efficiency. Those machine copies can do anything. We didn’t know if latency would be a problem, but it turns out it’s not an issue at all. We have servers on the East and West Coasts of the U.S., in the UK, Japan and Australia. We get such good pings that we can play on a Japanese or Australian server like it’s downtown Seattle from our Seattle studio. Things work so well that we advanced our plans to go global on Day One. The only territory we aren’t going to be in is China. We’re excited to see what happens as the markets emerge naturally.

What have you learned about which markets are into HAWKEN thus far?

We’re localizing the game and Websites for 28 languages at launch. The only real marketing we’ve done for HAWKEN is in North America and some in Europe. What’s interesting is that Russia and Australia are two of our top territories and Poland, Turkey and Brazil are in the Top 20.

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